No matter your reading taste, it isn’t often that you encounter a writer who’s a living legend. Jonathan Franzen is one of those writers – his reputation as a novelist and a thinker loom impressively in our literary landscape. His own relationship to his place in contemporary literature has at times seemed uneasy. Despite authoring two novels and a handful of essays, it wasn’t until The Corrections came out in 2001, just days after September 11, that he was catapulted to writerly superstardom; a seemingly dream-come-true distinction. That book, the story of the unraveling Lambert family, was a Midwestern epic and a reaffirmation of realistic fiction emerging from a more experimental, postmodern age.
And if people weren’t talking about Franzen’s masterpiece, they were certainly talking about him. Months after The Corrections appeared it was lauded with the selection into Oprah’s book club. When he expressed uneasiness with the recognition, admitting that he was concerned that his desired audience might shun the book, Oprah disinvited him to the show.
Franzen’s admittance of where he saw his work situated contributed to the ongoing ruminations on the sometimes blurry line between high art and populist (read: popular) work. It’s a line he’s continued to walk, whether he likes it or not. Freedom, another doorstopper of a book, is an incredibly smart and addictive page turner. Franzen returns to the Midwest, chronicling the tremendously dysfunctional Berglund family. Love – obsessive, rapturous, pragmatic, and uninspired – is in these pages as is the tension between our public and private selves, dreams imagined and often unrealized. Walter and Patty, the couple at the center of this novel, are at times infinitely relatable and cringingly, well, awful and it’s to Franzen’s credit and immense talent that we stay so transfixed, keen to experience every moment of their story as he’s written it, through 550 plus pages. Freedom also gave Franzen and Oprah an opportunity to patch up their relationship; she selected the new book for the last season of her book club and he appeared on her show last December.
As for that bit about a living legend. The chance to see Jonathan Franzen live feels a little like getting a ticket to Bob Dylan. Or Leonard Cohen. Or, to pick on another one of CHF’s stellar 2011 presenters, Laurie Anderson. Like these other masters, Franzen is a superstar. His perspective on literature, his intensity and commitment to big, moving, albeit emotionally exhausting novels, has earned him a well-deserved place in all of our important conversations on writing and reading. Listening to his interview last September (days after Freedom hit the shelves) with Guy Raz on “All Things Considered,” he reveals his psychology, both personally and writerly, that informs his work. He discusses the role both of his parents played in his maturation as a writer, mental illness and creativity, and his relationship with his good friend, the late writer David Foster Wallace. I can’t wait until he takes the stage on November 6, since undoubtedly there will be a few other revelations that will make my experience of his work just that much richer.
UIC Forum - Main Hall AB: Nov. 6, 2:00 PM
Tags: Jonathan Franzen, Tribune, Heartland, prize, literature, midwest, family, Oprah, book
